Attitudes To Noise

Let’s talk about noise. Not the lovely Swedish lullaby my friend hums at me down the phone but digital noise in our photographic images. Most of us profess a serious allergy to it such that noise control has become a major USP for many camera models. One of the many features prospective buyers look for is noise control at higher ISOs. Models like the Nikon D4S and Sony A7s market themselves specifically as clean imaging devices, having listened to (preyed on?) the market’s feverish insecurities about the dreaded grain.

ISO 4000. 28mm. F/2.8, 1/50sec.

There I was about to share actual photos on a mirrorless forum during my breakfast coffee when I stumbled upon a posting there about how the latest Olympus model has ever so slightly less RAW noise grain at ISO 6400 than previous models and what kind of mystical magic must be at play (yes, point and laugh all you A7s owners with your shameless ISO 409,000!). The fact that I couldn’t see any real difference in their comparison myself (and my eyes are reasonably good) only emboldened my disdain for the obsession over such minutiae. Would their purchasing decision really be determined by the perception of slightly fewer chroma particles at 100% magnification?

ISO 3200. 45mm F/1.8, 1/50 sec.

I won’t go into the science of noise and signal amplification as Nasim has covered that in the past with far greater expertise than I could ever hope to. This is more of an introspective article, considering whether or not noise is truly the nemesis we’re seemingly programmed to think it is. Certainly the endless fawning over super-clean but mediocre images undertaken by some online reviewers feeds this antipathy.

ISO 5000. 50mm. F/1.8, 1/60sec

Let’s be clear; one of the primary advantages of digital photography is noise control. With film (I was going to write ‘back in the days of…’ but of course many of you happily still use film) one has to change the film according to the situation, and higher speeds mean more grain. Keeping the film speed lower means a careful selection of subject, technique, lighting and timing. But with digital we all have the freedom to flick the dial and shoot in near darkness while getting a usable image, which we can probably later smooth with noise reduction software. It has enabled shooting possibilities that perhaps weren’t available in the pre-digital era, especially shooting action and sports. Bravo digital.

ISO 12,800. 210mm. F/4.8, 1/500sec

But have we become so conditioned to believe that we must be averse to noise at all costs? Even to an irrational extent as on that forum? Yes, noise is intrusive and unpleasant and if we raise the ISO high enough we get more of a watercolour painting smeared with hummus than an actual photograph. More noise also limits our printing options, peppering the print with a pox of pernicious pixelated pimples. No one wants that.

ISO 3200. 60mm. F/2.8, 1/80sec.

What about the creative inclusion or acceptance of noise as part of the artistic expression or merit of the image? Can it not render a certain authenticity or nostalgic look, especially in black and white? And if so, should we be so averse to it? Yes, when it overwhelms the image itself and obscures the subject. Some may argue that if we want a certain look it is better to start with a clean image and add noise to it with software. I can certainly accept that. Not sure if the result is as authentic but it’s doable.

ISO 200. 13mm. F/6.3. (In-camera B+W filter.)

What if we don’t own a D4s or equivalent beast? Isn’t a little noise worth getting the shot than not? If the only way to use a favourable shutter speed in the available light is to use a higher ISO, then let’s go for it. A dusting of noise is better than no image at all.

ISO 1600, 150mm, 1/100, f/2.8

Like my mother used to tell me when I refused my oats, a little grain never hurt anyone. Have we become so sensitive to the sensor’s sensitivity that we’ll ignore the image itself? There is an abundance of images from decades ago that rate iconic status but are riddled with noise. I doubt the people viewing them complained about it instead of stepping back to enjoy the picture. OK, perhaps they didn’t know any better, and, yes, perhaps if those images were taken with digital now they’d be cleaner and easier to tidy up with software. But perhaps they would have lost something other than just the noise too.

ISO 5000. 28mm. F/2.8, 1/60sec

How much noise one tolerates or finds acceptable is a matter of individual preference. It certainly matters less to me than the people who apparently have time to waste chastising me for having it in my images. I’ve used a full frame sensor in the past and enjoyed having useable images at very high ISOs. But I use a smaller sensor now and happily shoot up to ISO 6400 if I need to. More often than not I rather like the bristly texture; perhaps it reminds me of my stubble; who knows? But it is not much of an issue for me these days. I use fast lenses and I don’t often shoot in the dark unless I’m shooting long exposures, in which case I’m using the lowest ISO setting anyway. And I don’t feel the pressing need to simply own a device that could shoot in near darkness. So, for my particular needs I have what works for me. Beyond this sufficiency and the portability of my chosen system the artistic value (if there is any) of my images is far more important to me than having the biggest, cleanest, most expensive tool to make it. Your preferences may be different, of course.

ISO 3200. E-M5 + LUMIX G 20/F1.7 @ 20mm, 1/5sec, f/1.8

I won’t pretend I don’t clean some of my high ISO images with noise reduction software. Of course I do (although I have deliberately not cleaned any of the images in this post). And I always shoot RAW which renders the noise as a much finer grain that cleans more smoothly while leaving more detail intact. But my attitude to noise is far more indifferent these days. The more I shoot, the less I care, and while I consciously try to keep the noise to a minimum where possible, I’m far more obsessed with making the shot I want than the speckles of noise pollution that come with it.

ISO 1600. 19mm. F/2.8, 1/15sec. (In-Camera B+W filter)

Well, sorry to prattle on. It’s late and I’ve run out of vanilla biscotti coffee, so time for a Swedish lullaby, I think. Where did I put my phone?

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About Alpha Whiskey

Alpha Whiskey has pursued his enjoyment of photography both at home in the UK and overseas, capturing scenic views from Alaska to Bulgaria, from Iceland to California. He has pointed his camera and trained his eye at almost every subject, from wildlife to architecture, from portraits to landscapes, from the Red Bull X-Fighters to the Northern Lights. His photographs have been published on the covers of national publications and within media for the National Trust. His blog is a growing library of images from his travels, excursions, and his photowalks with friends, and he hopes that by sharing them he can encourage others to worry less about gear and simply go out and shoot.

Reader Interactions

Comments

Excellent post. all of the great photographers of the past worked with equipment that was vastly inferior to any of the equipment we have access to today. Yet their photographs endure and stand the test of time. We should all worry less about gear and more about creating or capturing lasting images.

By all means buy what you need in order to create the photos you seek. But remember, buying a Steinway doesn’t make me a musician if I can’t play music, yet a great musician can make music with two sticks and a tin can.

The great advantage of shooting raw is you can reduce or eliminate chroma noise while maintaining luma noise in programs like Lightroom or Capture One.

Noise is only a problem when you don’t want. :-) I regularly shoot in dark environments with a Sony RX100 III and a Nikon J4, sometimes with their ISOs maxed because light is so low. Although I rather not have noise in those shots, I get shots I otherwise would never have been able to get. I’ll minimize it, but trying to eliminate it would destroy the shots.

With the sensors in my D5100 and D600 cameras I rarely think about noise, I simply apply the ISO I need.

“Most, if not all, of the images illustrating your article would have a much lower level of both perceived detail and artistic effect if they had lower noise/grain.”

If noise/grain is adding something to perceived detail and artistic effect, than I’d say that’s not a good photo from beginning. I mean, if my picture has a “much” lower artistic value without grain, then there’s something wrong with my photography. This is my personal feeling, not scientific of course. On the other hand I agree that grain/noise is overrated, some grain is OK. If I will miss the shot due to hand shake then I’ll definitely increase ISO.

Erkan, Thanks for your comment. Excuse my delayed reply, I wanted to think about it very carefully before responding.

Building bricks that are used to construct walls have a pleasing surface texture rather than being boringly smooth. Some have a fine-grained texture, others have a coarse texture — the aesthetic effect is different between the types, but they are used when the aesthetic effect of a perfectly smooth surface would be close to zero. The same applies to the use of wood: even when sanded perfectly flat, its grain structure provides aesthetic pleasure.

When we capture a wide-angle shot of, say, a cityscape, we capture lines and shapes (and colours in non-B&W photography), but we cannot render any of the aesthetic textures of the city unless we produce a gigantic print from a camera that resolves hundreds of megapixels (such as a large format film camera).

Likewise, when we photograph a forest we cannot render the texture of each leaf on the trees. Our brain knows that the leaves do have a texture and that it is absent in the photograph — closer inspection of the image does not reveal those textures.

Having just the right amount of film grain or ‘digital noise’ in our images invokes in our viewers the cognitive illusion that the real textures existing in the scene have been both captured and rendered — which increases the aesthetic impact of our rendered image(s).

Similarly, an artist uses the technique of stippling to invoke the cognitive illusion that much more detail has been captured and rendered in their drawing/painting than actually exists.

Hopefully, I’ve clearly illustrated one or more of the fundamental differences between artists and photographers. The media that they use to portray their work is totally irrelevant. It is their level of understanding of the principles of art and human perception, not their understanding of advanced camera systems, that sets them worlds apart.

I shoot a fair bit of astro/nightscape photography. Images of things like the Milk Way, which contains billions of stars you can never capture, actually look better with a bit of noise/grain added, i.e.: it adds texture which the camera does not / can not capture, per your “… the right amount of film grain or ‘digital noise’ in our images invokes in our viewers the cognitive illusion that the real textures existing in the scene have been both captured and rendered” comment.

Bwa, Thanks very much for sharing your experience in astro/nightscape photography. My specialism is in night, twilight, and low-light photography, but it is limited to Earth-bound subjects and man-made objects therefore I’d never considered that shots of the Milky Way would indeed be artistically enhanced by a reasonable level of noise/grain.

My attitude is that noise is to be used – judiciously I suppose, as part of whatever photographic process I am thinking of using it for. There are times where I’ve photographed in near darkness using a pinhole cap on my digital camera, which means very long exposure times, and where noise becomes an aesthetic consideration of my image. Noise is not there to be feared but to be used where it’s part of a particular concept.

I too have become less concerned with noise, but I still dislike high iso because the colors aren’t as great (with my camera). Not sure what camera you used in these pics, but the colors are still nice.

My 0.02$ With my Nikon F2 I was always struggling with noise at ASA 400. today even if I can find noise in my high iso pics, if they are sharp I can easily live with that. What I hate of high iso is the muddy look we can see in cloth patterns or textures, plus the chroma noise.

I guess when I was pushing 100 ASA film to 400 (and sometimes beyond) to get a picture I wasn’t even thinking about grain/noise… I was thinking about getting a picture! Now shooting at high ISO’s results in a bit of noise which makes people go ballistic; strange that!?

As for whether there is a difference between grain and electronic noise, yes there is a difference. Whether one is more irritating than the other, I sorta like grain and don’t particularly like electronic noise… Just the way I lean. Personally I would like a digital image totally without “noise” and add “grain” as I see fit.

I agree with bwana’s comment. There must be a difference (Nasim and others are probably more informed on these matters than I), but I think I prefer the look of film grain to electronic grain and sometimes deliberately try to achieve that look.

Because how digital works, colour and banding problems, make DSLRs noise much badder beast. Digital noise is not ‘pure grain’ as in film which only depends on light intensity and where the colour and zones are not affected

In the film days we used often high iso film to get móre grain and everybody liked it (and I still do). Low noise and ultimate sharpness are just the big selling points of digital photography. To have superclean ultrasharp images is just mainstream nowadays (and boring in a way).

As is often the case, we depend on terminology, and choosing a word over the other to describe the same phenomenon may change the whole perspective. That’s why I would not say—to go along with Alpha Whiskey and Bwana—that “an abundance of images […] are riddled with noise,” but that they are carefully and deliberately “ornate” with grain. Neither noise nor grain are bad per se. Both features are welcome when they are deliberate or unavoidable; problem arises only when we want a noiseless image and we cannot get it…

I find digital noise to be distracting. On the other hand, film grain sets my heart aflutter when applied in an “artistic” or photo journalistic style.

Digital noise is so homogeneous-looking — translate: blah — , whereas film grain (to me at least!) is dynamic and chaotic in appearance, especially imparting to B&W images that Bogie, Sam Spade look. When shooting at high ISO’s, my mindset is to try and get the shot and worry about the noise later. If the noise is unacceptable, it becomes a candidate for B&W, converted in a software program such as NIK plug-ins or On1 Perfect Photo Suite, where one can add a pretty darned good film grain facsimile.

Grain is about the only thing I miss about high ASA or pushing during processing. I don’t miss the smell of a darkroom at all.

Great photos and great article! Maybe the last photo has a bit too much noise in the sky, but the picture is still worth having.

Here is what is funny. Once in awhile I add noise (horror!) instead of taking it away. Ever take a photo that meets your criteria as a keeper in almost every way but you think it lacks something? Here is a an example. You have a photo with a well lit, well separated, interesting subject that tells a story, but it’s marred by a drab background with too little structure. Maybe it lacks variety, creating dead space, or there is too little color causing it to lack balance. I know what I do …I dial up a little selective color (some sort of gradient) and add a little selective noise (grain?) in Photoshop to snap it up. I guess a little noise isn’t soo bad after all. Stop obsessing and start taking more pictures

I used to be picky about noise in my images, but that was back when I used a D40. :-)

I’m a happy owner of a D7000 since 2010 and still going ISO 1600 (sometimes pushing to 3200) in awe. The only thing that really bothers me is the color washing that happens – then B&W conversion must be mandatory, specially when doing people shots, skin colors get alien.

Some commentators have asked about the difference between film grain and ‘digital noise’ so I shall attempt to explain the difference…

1. FILM Observable film grain is (mostly) caused by the varying sizes of the light sensitive chemical granules which are applied as an emulsion to the film substrate. To make a film more sensitive to light, the granules have to be larger. From a manufacturing point of view, it is impossible to make each granule the same size and to place it accurately with nanometre precision. It is also highly undesirable to attempt this because it would create an objectionable symmetric grid pattern of granules — similar to the pixel grid of your monitor screen.

The granularity of a film is quantified by a number: its root mean square (RMS) granularity, which is effectively the standard deviation of its approximately Gaussian distribution of varying granule sizes and placement. To get an idea of what this means, think of the difference between a fine matt emulsion paint (low granularity) and pebble-dash (very high granularity!). In either paint, there are no discernible patterns, not just because the granularity is random, but because human pattern recognition is largely insensitive to random Gaussian distributions.

2. DIGITAL The noise in digital photography is very noticeably different from film because, in the shadow areas, it does not have a Gaussian (aka normal) distribution; it has a Poisson distribution resulting from the quantum mechanics of photon shot noise. Although this noise is also totally random, just like film grain, human cognition is hyper-sensitive to Poisson distributions: we regularly spot patterns that don’t actually exist. E.g. we spend half an hour in the rain waiting for a bus, then three arrive in row; and we spend our lives wondering why these and other coincidences keep happening. They aren’t coincidences, they are completely unconnected random events that are following the Poisson distribution of low frequency discretized [quantized/quantum] events.

High frequency Poisson distributions are indistinguishable from Gaussian distributions — both mathematically and cognitively. This is why we ‘see’ disturbing patterns in the deep shadow areas of digital images yet we ‘see’ only the equivalent of fine film grain in the mid-tone and lighter areas.

3. CONCLUSIONS Adding Gaussian (or triangular probability mass function random) noise to a digital image will mask the unwanted patterns we can see in the shadow areas. Noise in any quantized/quantum system increases the resolution of the system, even though it decreases its signal-to-noise ratio. In 8-bits per RGB channel quantized systems such as JPEG, adding the *correct* amount of noise prior to encoding the JPEG is essential in order to minimize both the Poisson noise patterns and the unsightly colour banding that can often be observed on completely noise free images.

For further information, a good place to start is by reading the Wikipedia article titled “Dither”.

I’ve written the above just in case some readers find it useful. Regards, Pete

Many thanks for your informative reply, Stefan. Without those photons, I doubt that most animals and plants would exist.

My usage of the term “infrared” was the loose dictionary definition: Infrared radiation has a wavelength from about 800 nm to 1 mm, and is emitted particularly by heated objects.

I wondered if you were being snarky. I thoroughly enjoy satire, but I refrained from replying to your question with: The infrared photon exchanges that occur in heating, refrigeration, and air conditioning — without which, most economies would collapse!

The photons that enable radar, microwave ovens, mobile devices, GPS, satellite and terrestrial radio/television; and of course, the highly treasured photons that enable the Internet to function.

And never underestimate the value of the delightful phonons [the photon equivalent] that enable sonar, humans to communicate verbally and to hear beautiful music.

All of the above photons and phonons are far less than 5% of those that exist in the universe.

Pete – loved your comment – because my whole life seems to have been filled with Poisson distribution noise! And I had been thinking it meant something but maybe not….. Tomorrow I’m getting my D200 out of the closet and will take some black and whites with my V1!!!

I read books with pictures of birds and animals sometimes, to help me identify the birds i shoot. Now when i see those pictures, most of them are quite noisy, even though they are meant to be used as reference books to learn about wildlife. In 1997 i visited Australia for the first time. I saw some small booklets about nature by Steve Parish. They were very colourful and beautiful and i was crazy about them. Now when i look at those books, A lot of those pictures are very noisy. Even those of stationary slow crawlers. Infact there is hardly a picture that isn’t noisy. But those booklets can still capture a boy’s imagination.

Excellent post, Sharif (as always) — and full of truth. Grain/noise has so much character. It certainly doesn’t work for every shot, but some of my all-time favorite photos are quite grainy by modern standards — Fan Ho’s street photography, for example — but the photos are wonderful regardless.

Thank you for publishing this. I couldn’t agree with you more. We in photography tend to get so wrapped up in the minutia of technical perfection that we sometimes forget about the all-important artistic qualities of what we do: form, meaning, and emotion. My wife who works in watercolor and oils would laugh at the notion that a little “grain” could spoil a beautiful picture.

I really appreciate this article. It made clear for me a few things that I’d gotten away from- it’s far more important to have a strong, in-focus composition than fretting over noise in the image. Of course, as it relates to exposing “properly,” I always like to have less noise than more, but I won’t stress over it.

I used to own a D7100. Then I went to a D90 and a couple of weeks ago I got a D200. And you know what? I don’t regret it. Not. A. Single. Penny. Yes, I do own a D600 but I use it far less often than back when I got it. I’m just in love with the D200 and its autofocus system.

I am happy for you if a retro D200 is now your cup of tea……………, but it shock me reading you comparing a D200 AF to a D7100 ………………… I had a D100 (expensive) with its 6 megapixels sensor and it was far from beeing an excellent AF as the D7100… or D7200 (better) or D750.

To me with the quality Nikon D-slrs have reached there is not much interest to upgrade cameras anymore specially if you are not a wildlife or bird shooter. If your work is not to your taste or to the expectations of your clients get more training not more gear.

Thanks for another great post. Years ago while attending a workshop by John Paul Caponigro he showed the attendees a number of original prints he had acquired by master photographers, a real treat to see some iconic images printed by the artists themselves. He even showed us several original prints by Ansel Adams. After gawking at some incredible compositions he asked us to look at the degree of sharpness and grain of the prints. And we were all astounded to then see in those prints softness and grain far exceeding what modern cameras and printers are capable of! But the images we were looking at never suffered from what we would today say was soft or grainy images. JP’s point was to put grain, sharpness into perspective and not let those subtleties drive your artistic expression. If you nail the story (e.g. compostion, exposure and subject) the sharpness and grain become minor players in the success of your photo.

Not wishing to go against the grain here (pun?) regarding the acceptability of noise and settling for it by calling it “grain”. Yes, Ansel, et al, did produce photos with plenty of noticeable grain. Why? As most likely, that is only what they had to work with during their days. Did they oooh and aaah over the softness and grain? That’s doubtful, unless they were going for an effect. I’ll betcha if Ansel were alive today, he’d be shooting a lot of digital back medium or large format photos, all the while cooing and chimping at how clean and noise free his RAW files are.

Settling for noise — besides that used for artistic and interpretive purposes — is kind of like wearing pitted glasses because it’s so cool looking through them. Fine. Wear pitted glasses. Me, I’d rather wear optically clear glasses, spattering them for effect if I want it, BUT, I have control over that and do not have to settle for the “look”.

Some take umbrage to software manipulation of their files. Cool! You probably only shoot JPGs too ‘cuz your files come out perfect. That’s wonderful, but with software, one can take files to the next level and beyond. Hey, one can even add noise (grain) to a clean file if they wish!

I’m not trying to create a flame war here. What I’m trying to discern is why noise is so valued in this thread. Seriously: chroma, let alone luminance? From the responses to the post, it sounds like most are trying to give credence to something that is inevitable, even with today’s tech. Tomorrow will be another story. Yes, we settle for noise because that is all we can do at the moment.

“From the responses to the post, it sounds like most are trying to give credence to something that is inevitable, even with today’s tech. Tomorrow will be another story. Yes, we settle for noise because that is all we can do at the moment.”

Photon shot noise determines what is, and what is not, achievable. Future technology will improve the quantum efficiency of sensors, but by how much? Suppose that the best current sensors are 50% efficient. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is given by the square root of the number of photons counted. Therefore a 100% efficient sensor would reduce the image noise by only half an f-stop (29%); or for the same image noise, it would increase the light sensitivity by only one f-stop.

Noise is here to stay, irrespective of future technology. There are some highly-complex noise reduction algorithms, but they can’t recover signals that haven’t been recorded! E.g. if the deep shadow areas have only one photon hitting the pixels then a one f-stop lower exposure will mean zero photons hitting the pixels — the noise will be zero, but the signal will also be zero. E.g. we have 64 photons counted by a pixel while the shutter is open. The SNR will be 8 (very poor). Successively reducing the exposure in increments of one f-stop yields photon counts of: 32; 16; 8; 4; 2; 1; 0; 0; 0.

If we double the area of each pixel — which means halving the number of megapixels on the sensor — we double the number of photons counted; therefore we improve the light sensitivity by one f-stop. However, camera buyers are demanding more, not fewer, megapixels *and* increased light sensitivity. The demand for very sensitive cameras having, say, 4 to 8 MP has become far too small to be worth manufacturing them. Very high quality 6×4 and 7×5 inch prints can be produced from 2 MP images; and 2 MP HDTV screens (1920×1080 pixels) can render stunning images.

Andrew, I am likewise not trying to start a flame war. I didn’t get the impression that noise/grain is being intrinsically valued in this thread. Far too much fuss is made about noise and grain; and many people have become so obsessed with it that their only enjoyment is in looking for it, criticising it, and trying to eliminate it — they are unable to enjoy the subject matter captured in the photographs.

The performance of modern high-end digital cameras is awesome therefore I struggle to comprehend why so many users complain about chroma and luminance noise. What on earth are these users trying to do with their cameras? I’m tempted to think that they know next to nothing about the art and craft of photography. Training courses might be able to improve their photography; better equipment will not.

Pete, maybe it’s the way I followed this post, but it sure seems to me what is implied is that noise is here to stay and we should live with it and not do a thing about it and call it artistic license. I absolutely agree that nothing can be done to eliminate noise completely with current technologies, but I do believe it will get better and better as time passes. Until then, we must live with it. On the other hand from reading the posts, it seems to be a consensus that doing nothing about it is preferable to minimizing it as best as one can achieve in camera and via software. If the tweaks don’t work, then that’s all one can do, so revert to the original, and consequently live with it. Sometimes we need to go beyond the boundaries in order to capture the scene by bumping up the ISO and/or making very long exposures which will create noise; understood.

BTW: the physics info you’ve offered on light and noise is much deeper and complicated that I ever imagined. No wonder camera companies have been taking so long to be where we are today in terms of noise reduction. Probably the best way to circumvent noise is to create an array of fewer but super giant pixels, therefor severely defeating noise. In order to accommodate these pixels, one would need at least an 8×10 inch sensor panel (or whatever)!

Andrew, Many thanks for your thoughtful reply. Discussing technical issues is, I think, very important; as is offering reasoned challenges to opinions.

Firstly, ignore my “Oops …” reply to myself, I think my original wording was correct. If it wasn’t then I hope someone else will correct it.

One thing that always bothers me is the promotion of false hopes for our future. I suppose manufacturers have a duty to promote false hopes. E.g. “Our new washing powder is much better at removing stains.”, which is advertising that has been endlessly repeated over the decades. Despite the numerous iterations of these ‘large improvements’, none of the products have actually improved by a large amount over the decades on a practical level. We still need to buy separate stain removers for stubborn stains. There is always a trade-off caused by the laws of physics and chemistry: a very strong bleach would remove most stains, but it would also bleach out colours and damage the materials used in our clothing etc. Making clothes out of stainless steel would provide neither warmth nor comfort; making them out of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, aka Teflon by DuPont) also has its limitations.

With expensive items, such as camera equipment, false hopes and dreams can easily lead a purchaser down the pathway to financial ruination, which is very sad. I try hard to explain the fundamental laws of optical physics, not to promote myself (I write anonymously), but in the sincere hope that something I’ve written will save at least one reader of this website from financial hardship, or in some way help to improve their photography, preferably both.

Areas of technology that are in their infancy improve rapidly with the passage of time. Established technology such as terrestrial and satellite radio & television receivers has reached 95% of the limits imposed by the laws of physics — further improvements to the receiver signal-to-noise ratio cannot possibly yield noticeably better performance. Digital camera equipment is approaching the limits of the laws of physics; hoping for ever continuing f-stops of improvements is just false hopes and dreams.

You mentioned having an 8×10 inch sensor panel to accommodate super giant pixels. Yes, each pixel would be very much more sensitive to light. But, a camera lens *projects* its image of the scene onto the sensor. If you’ve ever used any kind of display projector then you will have observed that moving the projector away from the screen makes the image bigger and it also reduces its brightness: because the light power (the number of photons per second) is being spread over the increased area, therefore each square mm/cm/inch/foot of the screen is receiving fewer photons per second.

[WARNING: The following may start a flame war!] When we carefully examine the effect of sensor size on image quality we find that, in theory and increasingly in practice, it makes absolutely no difference to their light gathering ability or to their signal-to-noise ratio, when each sensor has a similar number of megapixels. However, in my opinion, nothing can match the light gathering ability of a f/1 lens used on good quality FX cameras. A Micro Four Thirds camera (a crop factor of 2) would require a f/0.5 lens to compete. The equivalent lens on an 8×10 inch sensor would be either hideously expensive or simply impossible to manufacture.

When the available light is good in terms of both quality and brightness, and fast shutter speeds are not required to freeze movement in the scene or the camera, then 8×10 film will make even the best 36-50 MP FX cameras look totally pathetic in comparison. And never forget that cumbersome view cameras can achieve things that are impossible with fixed lens mount cameras.

When the available light is very low, and there is movement in the scene, then an FX format camera with a really fast lens does, and probably always will, outperform any other camera format. Not necessarily due to the laws of physics, more likely due to the law of supply and demand.

For general purpose photography, a high-quality modern pocket camera in the hands of an expert will, on average, considerably outperform/outshine non-experts using state-of-the-art camera systems.

I hope that was in some way useful; it wasn’t intended to be confrontational. Pete

Maybe a bit late in commenting, saw this good article just! Noise/grain – old school using Tri-X doing large (My faster used his Leica to do up to 3 – 4 feet wide for interior decoration, to be viewed at some distance) or pushing to 6 400 ASA accepted noise/grain. Reason is perhaps the noise kicks in using available light, we accept(ed) a more dirty look when shooting in low light, just like we accepted a big enlargement will have not knife sharp edges/details. Getting it too perfect (aka pixelpeeperapproved;-) tends to kill the feeling of the situation, thus I’m not yet fully sold on my Fuji compared to an old Leica lens..

Thanks for the eye-opening article on digital noise! When I process b&w pictures I often add grain in the Nik Silver Efex or similar tool to make especially background areas less sterile. Now I will try my D7000 with deliberately higher ISO to see if it gives me sort of filmy grain more naturally in the picture.

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